The Lonely Shoe

I was walking into a medical office building and to my left, on a metal bench, sat a single athletic shoe.  I thought that was a strange sight, you know, just a single shoe, all alone, in the middle of a bench, without its’ mate so it could be worn by someone without causing an awkward limp.  It looked brand new, not a speck of wear and tear on it – a Saucony brand running shoe.  It struck me as odd, so obviously I stopped to take a picture of it, then, I walked away to do my medical work.

And then, as I was about to enter the building, I stopped and looked back at it again, and an idea entered my brain. This shoe was not a throw-away, because it made no sense to throw away a single new running shoe.  No, it was placed there on purpose.  But what was the purpose, and why was I the one to stop and notice it, besides the fact that it was a Sunday afternoon, and there was no one around.  At least that’s what I thought.

When you are lucky enough to get to my age, and still have most of your senses working about 84% effectively, you have seen a lot of things.  And it came to me, at that moment that one of those “things” was the TV show, Get Smart.  It was a comedy show about a bumbling secret agent, Maxwell Smart and his beautiful spy colleague, 99. And yes, even at the age of 8 or 9, I thought she was hot and smart.   Max owned some fancy gadgets to assist him in his spy craft, I remember, including the cone of silence as well as the shoe phone. And, it was cordless, which of course, was unheard of in those days of the mid to late 60s. He was cool and we all thought it was amazing he could talk to the chief about the bad guys of CHAOS, by just dialing numbers on the sole of his shoe, but of course, it was not as slick as a cell phone of today, because he had to take his shoe off to call someone.  Kind of awkward in public, I think, and maybe slightly odoriferous at the end of a long day, and that is why he had to do it in the bathroom.

So, I looked it up and sure enough, sports illustrated created a speaker phone in the early 90s, and it did have a cord though, and not as high tech as Maxwell Smart, or even Dick Tracy’s advance before it’s time, telephone watch.  But alas, no one has seen any evidence of these phones again. And I thought, what happened to Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone after all these years?

So, I paced around a little bit, thinking about how silly it is to think about a single brand-new show sitting on a bench, bothering no one at all.   Except it was bothering me.  So, I thought about it some more, went inside and did some work. 

Later I came out, this time wearing sunglasses and my baseball cap, and there it was again –   same position, never moved. Beckoning me and tempting my curious but risk-taking soul.   I looked at it again, no, I really stared and I am sure the security camera guys had some good footage of that scene, but then, I think it was probably only a minute or so. Good thing I wore my hat and sunglasses.

Then, I finally made a decision, I reached down and then the hospital called me and I stopped and answered the call, then looked back at the shoe and then I…

© 2026 SRCarson